These results support several theoretical assumptions made in the literature, such as sensitivity to mispronunciation size and position of the mispronunciation. We also shed light on the impact of data analysis choices that may lead to different conclusions regarding the development of infants' mispronunciation sensitivity. Our article concludes with recommendations for improved practice in testing infants' word and sentence processing online. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).The gut microbiota has been suggested to influence neurodevelopment in rodents. Preliminary human studies have associated fecal microbiota composition with features of emotional and cognitive development as well as differences in thalamus-amygdala connectivity. Currently, microbiota-gut-brain axis studies cover heterogenous set of infant and child brain developmental phenotypes, while microbiota associations with more fine-grained aspects of brain development remain largely unknown. Here (N = 122, 53% boys), we investigated the associations between infant fecal microbiota composition and infant attention to emotional faces, as bias for faces is strong in infancy and deviations in early processing of emotional facial expressions may influence the trajectories of social-emotional development. The fecal microbiota composition was assessed at 2.5 months of age and analyzed with 16S rRNA gene sequencing. Attention to emotional faces was assessed with an age-appropriate face-distractor paradigm, using neutral, happy, fearful, and scrambled faces and salient distractors, at 8 months of age. We observed an association between a lower abundance of Bifidobacterium and a higher abundance of Clostridium with an increased "fear bias," that is, attention toward fearful versus happy/neutral faces. This data suggests an association between early microbiota and later fear bias, a well-established infant phenotype of emotionally directed attention. However, the clinical significance or causality of our findings remains to be assessed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).We report four studies that tested the hypothesis that gratitude increases obedience. Four experimental studies (N = 623) found that participants who were induced to feel gratitude obeyed to a greater extent a command to grind worms in a grinder than those feeling neutral. These novel findings demonstrate that gratitude can encourage obeying instructions to exact physical harm, violating moral principles of care. Grateful participants obeyed both benefactors and nonbenefactors. Induced happiness and admiration did not produce the same effect and we found evidence using a manipulation-of-mediator method that the need for social harmony played a mediating role. The findings suggest that gratitude can make a person more vulnerable to social influence, including obeying commands to perform an ethically questionable act. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).Adolescents often compare themselves favorably to others. Although such downward social comparisons make adolescents feel proud, they entail the risk of focusing adolescents on outperforming others rather than on improving themselves. This daily diary study (N = 389 adolescents, ages 11-15) tested the hypothesis that downward temporal comparisons-comparing one's present self favorably to one's past self, rather than to others-may elicit pride while encouraging adolescents to strive for self-improvement rather than superiority. https://www.selleckchem.com/products/cmc-na.html Such a desire for self-improvement may, in turn, cultivate a sense of relatedness. Results show that daily downward and upward comparisons co-occurred with pride and shame, respectively, regardless of whether those comparisons were social or temporal. Importantly, daily downward temporal comparisons (unlike daily downward social comparisons) co-occurred with a desire for self-improvement over superiority as well as with a sense of relatedness. This desire for self-improvement over superiority partially mediated the association between downward temporal comparison and a sense of relatedness. Together, these findings underline the role of social and temporal comparisons in self-conscious emotions and goal pursuit and suggest that temporal comparisons-unlike social comparisons-may help adolescents strive for personal growth and build satisfying relationships. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).Questionable research practices (QRPs) can occur whenever one result is favored over another, and tests of mediation are no exception. Given mediation's ubiquity and importance to both theory and practice, QRPs in tests of mediation pose a serious threat to the advancement of psychology. We investigate this issue through the introduction of a straightforward means of detecting the presence and magnitude of QRPs in tests of mediation and validate this methodology with a series of sensitivity tests and simulations. We then apply this method to 2,569 tests of mediation published in five leading psychology journals in 2018 and 2019. We find that despite most hypothesized tests of mediation being likely underpowered, most (76%) were nevertheless supported. Furthermore, confidence intervals (CIs) that just barely exclude zero are 3.6 to 4.4 times as prevalent as those CIs that just barely include zero. We also find a number of study- and test-level factors, such as whether the test of mediation was hypothesized, explain both whether the CI excluded zero (odds ratio [OR] = 17.87, p less then .001) as well as the CI's proximity to zero (b = .27, p less then .001). In addition, other factors, most notably sample size, do predict the CI's proximity to zero (γ = .00, p less then .001), but surprisingly do not predict the CI's exclusion of zero (OR = .99, p = .803). We conclude with actionable QRP curtailment strategies so that both, academics and practitioners, can have greater and well-founded confidence in tests of mediation in psychological research. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).In today's world of global migration and urbanization, millions of children are separated from parents. Their mental health and future competences as citizens depend on the quality of care from foster parents and group home staff in nonparental care settings. Caregivers are challenged by poor work conditions, too many children, and a lack of knowledge about care for traumatized children. How can our profession match this challenge by upscaling interventions? Digital designs for applications of psychology are growing, recently accelerated by the COVID-19 crisis. From 2008, the author developed a blended learning intervention. In partnerships with nongovernmental organizations and government agencies, care recommendations from an international network of researchers are transformed into start-up seminars for staff, followed by a 6-month online classroom education. Students learn and practice how to train local caregiver groups in attachment-based care, using training sessions developed in local languages, adjusted to culture.